'Ever been there?' asked the sergeant.
'No, although I've changed planes in Zurich God knows how many times. My business is photographing wars, and the Swiss have this strange affection for peace.'
'Well, the pathologist will conduct his examination tomorrow, I should think,' declared the sergeant. 'The inquest will be a day or two after that. You'll have to attend. I'll give you as much warning as I can.'
'Thanks, Tommy.'
They rose to their feet and shook hands briskly. It was cold in the library, and the fire had gone out. As he was about to open the door, the sergeant turned to Fitzduane. 'It doesn’t do to make too much fuss about these things. Best soon forgotten.'
Fitzduane smiled thinly and didn't answer.
As he rode back to Duncleeve, Fitzduane realized that he had forgotten to raise the small matter of his missing goat with the policeman. A goat gone astray wasn't exactly a police matter in itself, but the discovery a few days earlier of its decapitated and eviscerated carcass at the site of an old sacrificial mound up in the hills raised a few questions.
He wondered what had happened to the animal's magnificent horned head.
3
She looked down at him. She could feel him move inside her – the faintest caress of love. Her thighs tightened in spontaneous response. His hands stroked her breasts and then moved around to her back. She could feel a tingling along her spine as he touched her. Her head fell back, and she thrust against him, feeling go deeper inside her.
Their bodies were damp with sweat. She licked her thumb and forefinger and then reached down to her loins and felt through their intertwined pubic hair for where his penis entered her body. She encircled the engorged organ and rotated her fingers gently.
His whole body quivered, and then he controlled himself. She removed her fingers slowly. 'That's cheating,' he murmured. He smiled, and there was laughter and love in his eyes as he looked at her. 'That is a game two can play.' She laughed, and then her laughter turned to gasps as his finger found her clitoris and stroked her in the exact same place and with the rhythm and pressure she liked. She came in less than a minute, her upper body arched back and supported by her arms, her loins thrust against her lover.
He pulled her down to him, and they kissed deeply and slowly. She ran her fingers across his face and kissed his eyelids. They stayed interlocked, kissing and caressing. He remained hard inside her. He had already climaxed twice in the last hour and a half, and now it was easier.
They separated and lay side by side, looking at each other, still joined together at their loins. She felt him move again. Her juices began to flow once more. She felt sensual and sore, and she wanted him. He is, she thought, the most beautiful and sexy man.
He was a big man. He didn't look it at first glance because his face was finely chiseled and sensitive and his green eyes were gentle, but as he rolled on top of her, she could feel the power and weight of his physique. She drew up her knees and wrapped her legs around him. He kissed and sucked each of her nipples in turn. He was still holding back, but she could sense his control going. Her hands dug into his back as his thrusts increased. She bit the lobe of his ear and reached down to his buttocks and pulled him into her. He raised himself slightly to increase further the friction of his penis against her clitoris. She gasped as he did so and thrust her forefinger into him. She could feel herself coming and began to moan. He lost all semblance of control and came with frantic bursts into her body. He stayed on top of her and in her when it was over, his face nuzzled against her neck. She hugged him tightly and then stroked him like a child. Now and then she could feel the contours of the scars on his body.
They slept entwined for several hours.
Fitzduane was entertained by the contrast between a naked woman in the throes of lovemaking and the same woman in the cool, clothed image she presented to the rest of the world. The thought was not without erotic content. He wondered if women have similar thoughts. He thought it likely.
In the morning Etan was the armored career woman once again: ash blonde hair swept back and tied in a chignon; silk blouse with Russian collar, tailored suit from Wolfangel, accessories perfectly coordinated; the glint of gold on ears, neck, and wrists; a hint of Ricci.
'It's as well I know you're a natural blonde,' he said. 'Or rather, how I know it. Otherwise I'd feel distanced by that getup.' He gestured at the laden table on the glassed-in veranda. 'Breakfast is ready.'
He had bathed and shaved but then concentrated on preparing the meal. He was wearing only a white terry- cloth bathrobe. The name of its original – and presumably still legal – owner, faded from numerous washings, could just be discerned on the breast pocket.
In the distance, muted by the thick glass, there was the sound of a late-waking city, of traffic grinding through the expensive Dublin residential area of Ballsbridge.
'A little distance is necessary at times,' she said with a smile. 'I've got a professional image to maintain. I don't want to climax on camera.' He raised an eyebrow. She kissed him and sat down across the table. She could see scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, and there were bubbles in the orange juice.
They had met some three years earlier when Radio Telefis Eireann, Ireland's state-owned national broadcasting organization, had sent a camera crew over to do a magazine piece on Fitzduane exhibition of war photographs in the Shelbourne Hotel. Fitzduane had disliked being on the receiving end of a camera and had been clipped and enigmatic during the interview. Afterward he had been annoyed with himself for making the interview more difficult and less interesting than it might have been. He went over to apologize and was mildly surprised when Etan had responded by inviting him out to dinner.
They were lovers who had become friends. It might have become more, perhaps had become more – neither admitted it – but their careers kept them apart. Program deadlines kept Etan confined to the studios in Dublin for much of the time, and Fitzduane was out of Ireland so much. Though Etan was very fond of Fitzduane and had a growing sense that this might be more than an affair, she found it hard to understand how a man of such apparent gentleness and sensitivity engaged in such a dangerous and macabre occupation.
He had once tried to explain it. He had a beautiful, rich voice with scarcely a trace of an Irish accent – a characteristic of his class and background. It was his voice above all, she thought, that had attracted her initially. She had rejected his rationale with some vigor, but she remembered his exact words.
'War is about extremes,' he had said, 'extremes of violence and horror, but also extremes of heroism, of compassion, and of comradeship. It's the ultimate paradox. It's feeling utterly, totally alive in every molecule of your body because of – not in spite of – the presence and the threat of death. Often I hate it, and often I'm afraid, yet after it's over and I'm away from it, I want to go back. I miss that sense of being on the edge.'
He had turned to her and stroked her cheek. 'Besides,' he had added with a grin, 'it's what I know.'
He decided he would take a raincheck on pointing out to her that virtually every day, she presented, from a warm, safe studio, the sort of violent news stories she criticized him for covering. But then again, maybe she wasn't being so inconsistent. Eating meat didn't automatically make you want to work in a slaughterhouse.
She remembered her temper flaring and her sense of frustration. 'It's like hearing a drug addict trying to rationalize his heroin,' she had said. 'To me it doesn't make sense to make your living out of photographing people killing each other. It's even crazier when that puts you at risk as well. You're not immune just because you carry a press card and a camera, you know that bloody well. I miss you horribly when you go. Like a damn fool, instead of putting you out of my mind, I worry myself sick that you may be killed or maimed or just disappear.'
He had kissed her gently on the lips, and despite herself she had responded. 'The older I get, the less chance I have of being killed,' he had said. 'It's mostly the young who die in war; that's the way the system works. You mightn't be considered old enough to vote, but they'll make a paratrooper out of you.'
'Bullshit,' she had retorted, and then she had made love to him with tenderness and anger, sobbing when she had climaxed. Afterward she had held him in her arms, her cheeks wet, while he slept. It didn't change
